In Bars & Clubs

Milwaukee's best bowling alley bar, 2011: Landmark Lanes

"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee.com is back for another round! The whole month of February, we're serving up intoxicatingly fun articles on bars and clubs -- including guides, the latest trends, bartender profiles and more. Grab a designated driver and dive in!

The votes are in and the winners have been selected for OnMilwaukee's Best: Bars & Clubs, 2011. Find readers' results in 50 categories, including an editors' pick, in this series of articles that run daily in the Bars and Clubs section of OnMilwaukee.com.

Few things are more identified with Milwaukee than bars and bowling.

Last year, for the first time, we decided to combine them into a category for our annual readers' survey. The results weren't exactly surprising.

Landmark Lanes, the 83-year-old icon located at 2220 N. Farwell Ave., captured first place by a comfortable margin over runner-up, Bay View Bowl. This year, the results were much the same.

Although thousands of East Siders have enjoyed a beverage or a game of pool in the "subterranean" atmosphere of the Landmark, not everyone can say that they actually bowled there. On some crowded (drunken) evenings, people have probably stumbled through the facility without realizing that bowling was taking place.

OnMilwaukee.com manager editor Bobby Tanzilo described the Landmark thusly in a story that ran before the bar's 80th birthday:

"Head downstairs and the arcade still flickers off to the right, the sound of pins toppling is still heard from beyond the bowling shoe rental counter. The side bar -- formerly the locker room for the league bowlers -- is still the place to be and still has the East Side's only bumper pool table.

"The back bar -- formerly jazz guitarist George Pritchett's domain -- also once had bowling lanes, but for years has been darts central. The main bar is still the best place to keep a watchful eye over almost the entire complex."

In that story, majority owner Slava Tuzhilkov told Tanzilo: "I heard many times people call Landmark (a) second home, where many customers spent a lot of time and meet with friends. We are like an underground entertainment center with a home recreation room atmosphere. And what seems to keep people coming back is the number of things you can do here. We have bowling, pool, darts, an arcade; just a lot of stuff to do."

That's the case for several bowling alley bars, which explains why they can be a fun stop even if you don't plan on changing your shoes.

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Talkbacks

has anyone actually ever bowled there? I've chipped one ball there and had a second scuffed from the floors cause they don't oil their lanes. I went in recently and noticed they had repaired some of the lanes... but again no oil.

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